As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. An option is an Information Handling System (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, global communications, etc. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Components of an IHS consume electrical power and can generate significant amounts of heat. Heat within an IHS may degrade the reliability and performance of IHS components, possibly resulting in costly malfunctions and component failures. In order to dissipate generated heat, an IHS may include a cooling fan, or a plurality of cooling fans organized with an airflow cooling system. Cooling fans may have different characteristics. Certain of these fan characteristics may be configurable, such as the operating speed of a fan. As temperatures within an IHS increase, the speed of a fan can be likewise increased to ventilate more heated air from within the IHS. In an IHS utilizing an airflow cooling system comprising a plurality of fans, a centralized controller may respond to increased temperatures by ventilating more air by increasing the operating speed of some or all of the fans in the system. In order to conserve power, an airflow cooling system may also be configured to decrease fan speeds in response to lower temperatures within the IHS.
Various components within the IHS may be outfitted with sensors that monitor operating temperatures at various locations in the system. Based on temperature readings provided by such sensors, corresponding fan speed adjustments may be requested from an airflow cooling system via fan request messages. Based on the fan request messages received from various components within the system, the IHS determines the appropriate fan speed setting that will provide adequate ventilation.